All Our Articles

Compassion – it can be taught

Compassion – it can be taught Brain, Worth Noting Comments Off

May 232013

Until now, little was scientifically known about the human potential to cultivate compassion — the emotional state of caring for people who are suffering in a way that motivates altruistic behavior.

A new study by researchers at the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the Waisman Center of the University of Wisconsin-Madison shows that adults can be trained to be more compassionate. The report, published Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, investigates whether training adults in compassion can result in greater altruistic behavior and related changes in neural systems underlying compassion.

“Our fundamental question was, ‘Can compassion be trained and learned in adults? Can we become more caring if we practice that mindset?’” says Helen Weng, lead author of the study and a graduate student in clinical psychology. “Our evidence points to yes.”

In the study, the investigators trained young adults to engage in compassion meditation, an ancient Buddhist technique to increase caring feelings for people who are suffering. In the meditation, participants envisioned a time when someone has suffered and then practiced wishing that his or her suffering was relieved. They repeated phrases to help them focus on compassion such as, “May you be free from suffering. May you have joy and ease.”

Participants practiced with different categories of people, first starting with a loved one, someone whom they easily felt compassion for, like a friend or family member. Then, they practiced compassion for themselves and, then, a stranger. Finally, they practiced compassion for someone they actively had conflict with called the “difficult person,” such as a troublesome coworker or roommate.

“It’s kind of like weight training,” Weng says. “Using this systematic approach, we found that people can actually build up their compassion ‘muscle’ and respond to others’ suffering with care and a desire to help.”

Compassion training was compared to a control group that learned cognitive reappraisal, a technique where people learn to reframe their thoughts to feel less negative. Both groups listened to guided audio instructions over the Internet for 30 minutes per day for two weeks. “We wanted to investigate whether people could begin to change their emotional habits in a relatively short period of time,” says Weng.

The real test of whether compassion could be trained was to see if people would be willing to be more altruistic — even helping people they had never met. The research tested this by asking the participants to play a game in which they were given the opportunity to spend their own money to respond to someone in need (called the “Redistribution Game”). They played the game over the Internet with two anonymous players, the “Dictator” and the “Victim.” They watched as the Dictator shared an unfair amount of money (only $1 out of $10) with the Victim. They then decided how much of their own money to spend (out of $5) in order to equalize the unfair split and redistribute funds from the Dictator to the Victim.

“We found that people trained in compassion were more likely to spend their own money altruistically to help someone who was treated unfairly than those who were trained in cognitive reappraisal,” Weng says.

“We wanted to see what changed inside the brains of people who gave more to someone in need. How are they responding to suffering differently now?” asks Weng. The study measured changes in brain responses using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) before and after training. In the MRI scanner, participants viewed images depicting human suffering, such as a crying child or a burn victim, and generated feelings of compassion towards the people using their practiced skills. The control group was exposed to the same images, and asked to recast them in a more positive light as in reappraisal.

The researchers measured how much brain activity had changed from the beginning to the end of the training, and found that the people who were the most altruistic after compassion training were the ones who showed the most brain changes when viewing human suffering. They found that activity was increased in the inferior parietal cortex, a region involved in empathy and understanding others. Compassion training also increased activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the extent to which it communicated with the nucleus accumbens, brain regions involved in emotion regulation and positive emotions.

“People seem to become more sensitive to other people’s suffering, but this is challenging emotionally. They learn to regulate their emotions so that they approach people’s suffering with caring and wanting to help rather than turning away,” explains Weng.

Compassion, like physical and academic skills, appears to be something that is not fixed, but rather can be enhanced with training and practice. “The fact that alterations in brain function were observed after just a total of seven hours of training is remarkable,” explains UW-Madison psychology and psychiatry professor Richard J. Davidson, founder and chair of the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds and senior author of the article.

“There are many possible applications of this type of training,” Davidson says. “Compassion and kindness training in schools can help children learn to be attuned to their own emotions as well as those of others, which may decrease bullying. Compassion training also may benefit people who have social challenges such as social anxiety or antisocial behavior.”

Weng is also excited about how compassion training can help the general population. “We studied the effects of this training with healthy participants, which demonstrated that this can help the average person. I would love for more people to access the training and try it for a week or two — what changes do they see in their own lives?”

Both compassion and reappraisal trainings are available on the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds’ website. “I think we are only scratching the surface of how compassion can transform people’s lives,” says Weng.

Source: Association for Psychological Science

Stories with Tony Delroy May 17

Stories with Tony Delroy May 17 Delroy's NightLife Comments Off

May 172013

At last research into why rock stars enjoy the success they do with the opposite sex. Men with guitars are more attractive to women. You only have to carry one to improve your dating chances.

Speaking of music – if you imagine colours when you listen to music – you’re not alone, and what’s remarkable is that many people evoke the same colours as you do. The emotional palette of our imagination crosses cultural boundaries – it could be hard wired.

If mental arithmetic is hard for you – a new brain stimulation method might make a big difference. Trans cranial random noise stimulation brings about big improvements and they seem to be long lasting.

It’s been long thought that exercise can help people out of depression, but how much and how often? New research says 3 to 5 sessions a week for 45 to 60 minutes.

Kava, the intoxicating Pacific Islands drink has been found to help people with anxiety? Australian research showed a significant decrease in generalised anxiety disorders for people using kava.

And champagne may help with memory loss associated with dementia? It’s the phenolic compounds.This may explain how Winston Churchill lived a long life despite his drinking – his favorite tipple was champagne.

Bach to the blues, our emotions match music to colors

Bach to the blues, our emotions match music to colors Brain, News, Perception Comments Off

May 172013

Whether we’re listening to Bach or the blues, our brains are wired to make music-color connections depending on how the melodies make us feel, according to new research from the University of California, Berkeley. For instance, Mozart’s jaunty Flute Concerto No. 1 in G major is most often associated with bright yellow and orange, whereas his dour Requiem in D minor is more likely to be linked to dark, bluish gray.

Mozart’s Flute Concerto No.1 in G major evokes yellows and oranges. (American Classical Orchestra with Sandra Miller)
Moreover, people in both the United States and Mexico linked the same pieces of classical orchestral music with the same colors. This suggests that humans share a common emotional palette – when it comes to music and color – that appears to be intuitive and can cross cultural barriers, UC Berkeley researchers said.

“The results were remarkably strong and consistent across individuals and cultures and clearly pointed to the powerful role that emotions play in how the human brain maps from hearing music to seeing colors,” said UC Berkeley vision scientist Stephen Palmer, lead author of a paper published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Our emotions can color the music we hear. (iStockphoto)
Using a 37-color palette, the UC Berkeley study found that people tend to pair faster-paced music in a major key with lighter, more vivid, yellow colors, whereas slower-paced music in a minor key is more likely to be teamed up with darker, grayer, bluer colors.

“Surprisingly, we can predict with 95 percent accuracy how happy or sad the colors people pick will be based on how happy or sad the music is that they are listening to,” said Palmer, who will present these and related findings at the International Association of Colour conference at the University of Newcastle in the U.K. on July 8. At the conference, a color light show will accompany a performance by the Northern Sinfonia orchestra to demonstrate “the patterns aroused by music and color converging on the neural circuits that register emotion,” he said.

The findings may have implications for creative therapies, advertising and even music player gadgetry. For example, they could be used to create more emotionally engaging electronic music visualizers, computer software that generates animated imagery synchronized to the music being played. Right now, the colors and patterns appear to be randomly generated and do not take emotion into account, researchers said.

They may also provide insight into synesthesia, a neurological condition in which the stimulation of one perceptual pathway, such as hearing music, leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a different perceptual pathway, such as seeing colors. An example of sound-to-color synesthesia was portrayed in the 2009 movie The Soloist when cellist Nathaniel Ayers experiences a mesmerizing interplay of swirling colors while listening to the Los Angeles symphony. Artists such as Wassily Kandinksky and Paul Klee may have used music-to-color synesthesia in their creative endeavors.
Stephen Palmer and Karen Schloss have collaborated on several studies on the psychology of color. (Yasmin Anwar photo)
Nearly 100 men and women participated in the UC Berkeley music-color study, of which half resided in the San Francisco Bay Area and the other half in Guadalajara, Mexico. In three experiments, they listened to 18 classical music pieces by composers Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Johannes Brahms that varied in tempo (slow, medium, fast) and in major versus minor keys.

In the first experiment, participants were asked to pick five of the 37 colors that best matched the music to which they were listening. The palette consisted of vivid, light, medium, and dark shades of red, orange, yellow, green, yellow-green, green, blue-green, blue, and purple.

Participants consistently picked bright, vivid, warm colors to go with upbeat music and dark, dull, cool colors to match the more tearful or somber pieces. Separately, they rated each piece of music on a scale of happy to sad, strong to weak, lively to dreary and angry to calm.

Two subsequent experiments studying music-to-face and face-to-color associations supported the researchers’ hypothesis that “common emotions are responsible for music-to-color associations,” said Karen Schloss, a postdoctoral researchers at UC Berkeley and co-author of the paper.

For example, the same pattern occurred when participants chose the facial expressions that “went best” with the music selections, Schloss said. Upbeat music in major keys was consistently paired with happy-looking faces while subdued music in minor keys was paired with sad-looking faces. Similarly, happy faces were paired with yellow and other bright colors and angry faces with dark red hues.

Next, Palmer and his research team plan to study participants in Turkey where traditional music employs a wider range of scales than just major and minor. “We know that in Mexico and the U.S. the responses are very similar,” he said. “But we don’t yet know about China or Turkey.”

Other co-authors of the study are Zoe Xu of UC Berkeley and Lilia Prado-Leon of the University of Guadalajara, Mexico.

Source: UC Berkeley

Fast and painless way to better mental arithmetic? Yes, there might actually be a way

Fast and painless way to better mental arithmetic? Yes, there might actually be a way Brain, News Comments Off

May 172013

In the future, if you want to improve your ability to manipulate numbers in your head, you might just plug yourself in. So say researchers who report in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on May 16 on studies of a harmless form of brain stimulation applied to an area known to be important for math ability.

“With just five days of cognitive training and noninvasive, painless brain stimulation, we were able to bring about long-lasting improvements in cognitive and brain functions,” says Roi Cohen Kadosh of the University of Oxford.

Incredibly, the improvements held for a period of six months after training. No one knows exactly how this relatively new method of stimulation, called transcranial random noise stimulation (TRNS), works. But the researchers say the evidence suggests that it allows the brain to work more efficiently by making neurons fire more synchronously.

Cohen Kadosh and his colleagues had shown previously that another form of brain stimulation could make people better at learning and processing new numbers (see http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-11/cp-ebs102710.php). But, he says, TRNS is even less perceptible to those receiving it. TRNS also has the potential to help even more people. That’s because it has been shown to improve mental arithmetic—the ability to add, subtract, or multiply a string of numbers in your head, for example—not just new number learning. Mental arithmetic is a more complex and challenging task, which more than 20 percent of people struggle with.

Ultimately, Cohen Kadosh says, with better integration of neuroscience and education, this line of study could really help humans reach our cognitive potential in math and beyond. It might also be of particular help to those suffering with neurodegenerative illness, stroke, or learning difficulties.

“Maths is a highly complex cognitive faculty that is based on a myriad of different abilities,” Cohen Kadosh says. “If we can enhance mathematics, therefore, there is a good chance that we will be able to enhance simpler cognitive functions.”

Source: Cell Press

Guitarists are more attractive – two studies show

Guitarists are more attractive – two studies show Men, Sensuality and Sexuality, Women, Worth Noting Comments Off

May 172013

Two independent studies have found that women find men more attractive if they are holding a guitar, Bob Yirka writes in Medical Express.

The first one, conducted by researchers in France was based on a young man asking strangers for a date—their results are outlined in an article they’ve had published in Psychology of Music. In the second study researchers used Facebook Friend requests to gauge guitar holding attractiveness. Their results have been detailed in an article they’ve had published in Letters on Evolutionary Behavioral Science.

In the first study, researchers from Université de Bretagne-Sud, France enlisted the assistance of a young “good looking” male volunteer. He was asked to approach 300 young women on the street, tell them he thought they were pretty and ask for their number. During 100 of the encounters he carried a guitar, another 100 times a gym bag and the other 100 times nothing at all. In tabulating the results, the researchers found that women gave their number to the young man 31 percent of the time when he was holding a guitar, but only 14 percent of the time when he was carrying nothing. When he was holding a gym bag, he got a number just 9 percent of the time.

In the second study, researchers from Israel’s Ruppin Academic Center, created two Facebook accounts for an “attractive” young man—in one account the profile picture showed him holding a guitar, in another he was not. The researchers then sent out Friend requests to 100 young women who listed themselves as single on their profile. They found that 14 out of 50 requests were accepted if the young man was pictured holding a guitar, while only 5 out of 50 were accepted if he appeared without the guitar. In a follow-up, the researchers repeated the experiment in the same way except they used a female model and sent requests to single men. Interestingly, they report that a woman holding a guitar did not appear to change the likelihood of having her Friend request accepted. Thus, it appears that guitar holding only works to boost male attractiveness.

Fish oil – the answer to junk food?

Fish oil – the answer to junk food? A Study Shows, Brain, Omega 3,6, Worth Noting Comments Off

May 152013

Data from more than 180 research papers suggests fish oils could minimise the effects that junk food can have on the brain, a review by researchers at the University of Liverpool has shown.

The team at the University’s Institute of Ageing and Chronic Disease reviewed research from around the world to see whether there was sufficient data available to suggest that omega-3s had a role to play in aiding weight loss. Research over the past 10 years has indicated that high-fat diets could disrupt neurogenesis, a process that generates new nerve cells, but diets rich in omega-3s could prevent these negative effects by stimulating the area of the brain that control feeding, learning and memory.

Data from 185 research papers revealed, however, that fish oils do not have a direct impact on this process in these areas of the brain, but are likely to play a significant role in stalling refined sugars and saturated fats’ ability to inhibit the brain’s control on the body’s intake of food. Dr Lucy Pickavance, from the University’s Institute of Ageing and Chronic Disease, explains: “Body weight is influenced by many factors, and some of the most important of these are the nutrients we consume. Excessive intake of certain macronutrients, the refined sugars and saturated fats found in junk food, can lead to weight gain, disrupt metabolism and even affect mental processing.

“These changes can be seen in the brain’s structure, including its ability to generate new nerve cells, potentially linking obesity to neurodegenerative diseases. Research, however, has suggested that omega-3 fish oils can reverse or even prevent these effects. We wanted to investigate the literature on this topic to determine whether there is evidence to suggest that omega-3s might aid weight loss by stimulating particular brain processes.” Research papers showed that on high-fat diets hormones that are secreted from body tissues into the circulation after eating, and which normally protect neurons and stimulate their growth, are prevented from passing into the brain by increased circulation of inflammatory molecules and a type of fat called triglycerides.

Molecules that stimulate nerve growth are also reduced, but it appears, in studies with animal models, that omega-3s restore normal function by interfering with the production of these inflammatory molecules, suppressing triglycerides, and returning these nerve growth factors to normal. Dr Pickavance added: “Fish oils don’t appear to have a direct impact on weight loss, but they may take the brakes off the detrimental effects of some of the processes triggered in the brain by high-fat diets. They seem to mimic the effects of calorie restrictive diets and including more oily fish or fish oil supplements in our diets could certainly be a positive step forward for those wanting to improve their general health.”

The research is published in the British Journal of Nutrition. Dr Pickavance will also be discussing the effects of high-fat diets on meal patterns and the impacts of high-saturated fats on muscle composition at the 20th European Congress on Obesity at the Liverpool Arena and Convention Centre later this month.

Source: University of Liverpool

Champagne – a dementia cure?

Champagne – a dementia cure? Brain, Dementia, Therapies, Worth Noting Comments Off

May 152013

New research shows that drinking one to three glasses of champagne a week may counteract the memory loss associated with ageing, and could help delay the onset of degenerative brain disorders, such as dementia.

Scientists at the University of Reading have shown that the phenolic compounds found in champagne can improve spatial memory, which is responsible for recording information about one’s environment, and storing the information for future navigation. The compounds work by modulating signals in the hippocampus and cortex, which control memory and learning.

The compounds were found to favourably alter a number of proteins linked to the effective storage of memories in the brain. Many of these are known to be depleted with age, making memory storage less efficient, and leading to poorer memory in old age and conditions such as dementia. Champagne slows these loses and therefore may help prevent the cognitive losses that occur during typical and atypical brain ageing. Champagne has relatively high levels of phenolics compared to white wine, deriving predominantly from the two red grapes, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier, which are used in its production along with the white grape Chardonnay.

It is these phenolic compounds which are believed to be responsible for the beneficial effects of champagne on the brain. Professor Jeremy Spencer, Department of Food and Nutritional Sciences, University of Reading, said: “These exciting results illustrate for the first time that the moderate consumption of champagne has the potential to influence cognitive functioning, such as memory. Such observations have previously been reported with red wine, through the actions of flavonoids contained within it.

“However, our research shows that champagne, which lacks flavonoids, is also capable of influencing brain function through the actions of smaller phenolic compounds, previously thought to lack biological activity. We encourage a responsible approach to alcohol consumption, and our results suggest that a very low intake of one to two glasses a week can be effective.” Dr. David Vauzour, the researcher on the study, added: “in the near future we will be looking to translate these findings into humans. This has been achieved successfully with other polyphenol-rich foods, such as blueberry and cocoa, and we predict similar outcomes for moderate Champagne intake on cognition in humans.”

Previous research from the University of Reading revealed that two glasses of champagne a day may be good for your heart and circulation and could reduce the risks of suffering from cardiovascular disease and stroke. The paper is published in Antioxidants and Redox Signalling.

Source: University of Reading

Exercise for patients with major depression — What kind, how intense, how often?

Exercise for patients with major depression — What kind, how intense, how often? Depression, Exercise, Recently Comments Off

May 152013

Exercise has been shown to be an effective treatment for major depressive disorder (MDD), both when used alone and in combination with other treatments. There’s now sufficient research data to provide specific guidance on how to prescribe exercise for depressed patients, according to a report in the May Journal of Psychiatric Practice®. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health.

“Despite the substantial evidence supporting the use of exercise in the treatment of MDD, previous studies have not provided a clear indication of the proper dose of exercise needed to elicit an antidepressant effect,” write Chad Rethorst, PhD, and Madhukar Trivedi, MD, of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas. To fill this gap, the authors reviewed available data from randomized controlled trials, with the goal of developing specific and detailed recommendations for clinicians on how to prescribe exercise for their patients with MDD.

Exercise for Major Depression—Evidence of Effectiveness

Randomized trials have shown that exercise is effective in reducing depressive symptoms in patients with MDD, on its own and in conjunction with other treatments, such as antidepressant medication and/or psychotherapy. Exercise may help to meet the need for cost-effective and accessible alternative therapies for depressive disorders—particularly for the substantial number of patients who don’t recover with currently available treatments.

Based on the available data, aerobic exercise is the preferred form of exercise for patients with MDD—although there is also support for resistance training, Drs Rethorst and Trivedi note. In terms of session frequency and duration, they recommend that patients participate in three to five exercise sessions per week, for 45 to 60 minutes per session.

In terms of intensity, for aerobic exercise, they recommend achieving a heart rate that is 50 to 85 percent of the individual’s maximum heart rate (HRmax). For resistance training, they recommend a variety of upper and lower body exercises―three sets of eight repetitions at 80 percent of 1-repetition maximum (RM—that is, 80 percent of the maximum weight that the person can lift one time).

Data suggest that patients may experience improvement in depressive symptoms as little as four weeks after starting exercise. However, Drs Rethorst and Trivedi emphasize that the exercise program should be continued for at least ten to twelve weeks to achieve the greatest antidepressant effect.

Some people have questioned whether patients with MDD will be willing to participate in an exercise program. But Drs Rethorst and Trivedi note that, in the studies they reviewed, only about fifteen percent of patients dropped out of exercise programs—comparable to dropout rates in studies of medications and psychotherapy.

The authors discuss strategies that may help improve adherence to exercise programs, such as consulting patients about their preferred types of exercise and providing individualized educational materials and feedback. They also provide some practical tips for clinicians on how to estimate exercise intensity using readily available information.

Even if the depressed patient can’t reach the target intensity and frequency levels, exercise can still be helpful. “Taken as a whole, these findings suggest that exercise doses below the current recommendations may still be beneficial for patients with MDD,” Drs Rethorst and Trivedi add. “Therefore, clinicians should encourage patients to engage in at least some exercise, even if they do not exercise enough to meet current public health recommendations.”

Source: Wolters Kluwer Health

Markets erode moral values

Markets erode moral values Worth Noting Comments Off

May 152013

Many people express objections against child labor, exploitation of the workforce or meat production involving cruelty against animals. At the same time, however, people ignore their own moral standards when acting as market participants, searching for the cheapest electronics, fashion or food. Thus, markets reduce moral concerns. This is the main result of an experiment conducted by economists from the Universities of Bonn and Bamberg. The results are presented in the latest issue of the renowned journal “Science“.

Prof. Dr. Armin Falk from the University of Bonn and Prof. Dr. Nora Szech from the University of Bamberg, both economists, have shown in an experiment that markets erode moral concerns. In comparison to non-market decisions, moral standards are significantly lower if people participate in markets.

In markets, people ignore their individual moral standards

“Our results show that market participants violate their own moral standards,” says Prof. Falk. In a number of different experiments, several hundred subjects were confronted with the moral decision between receiving a monetary amount and killing a mouse versus saving the life of a mouse and foregoing the monetary amount. “It is important to understand what role markets and other institutions play in moral decision making. This is a question economists have to deal with,” says Prof. Szech.

“To study immoral outcomes, we studied whether people are willing to harm a third party in exchange to receiving money. Harming others in an intentional and unjustified way is typically considered unethical,” says Prof. Falk. The animals involved in the study were so-called “surplus mice”, raised in laboratories outside Germany. These mice are no longer needed for research purposes. Without the experiment, they would have all been killed. As a consequence of the study many hundreds of young mice that would otherwise all have died were saved. If a subject decided to save a mouse, the experimenters bought the animal. The saved mice are perfectly healthy and live under best possible lab conditions and medical care.

Simple bilateral markets affect moral decisions

A subgroup of subjects decided between life and money in a non-market decision context (individual condition). This condition allows for eliciting moral standards held by individuals. The condition was compared to two market conditions in which either only one buyer and one seller (bilateral market) or a larger number of buyers and sellers (multilateral market) could trade with each other. If a market offer was accepted a trade was completed, resulting in the death of a mouse. Compared to the individual condition, a significantly higher number of subjects were willing to accept the killing of a mouse in both market conditions. This is the main result of the study. Thus markets result in an erosion of moral values. “In markets, people face several mechanisms that may lower their feelings of guilt and responsibility,” explains Nora Szech. In market situations, people focus on competition and profits rather than on moral concerns. Guilt can be shared with other traders. In addition, people see that others violate moral norms as well.

“If I don’t buy or sell, someone else will.”

In addition, in markets with many buyers and sellers, subjects may justify their behavior by stressing that their impact on outcomes is negligible. “This logic is a general characteristic of markets,” says Prof. Falk. Excuses or justifications appeal to the saying, “If I don’t buy or sell now, someone else will.” For morally neutral goods, however, such effects are of minor importance. Nora Szech explains: “For goods without moral relevance, differences in decisions between the individual and the market conditions are small. The reason is simply that in such cases the need to share guilt or excuse behavior is absent.”

Source: University of Bonn

Positive Social Support at Work Shown to Reduce Risk of Diabetes

Positive Social Support at Work Shown to Reduce Risk of Diabetes News Comments Off

May 152013

Cases of type 2 diabetes continue to rise in the US. And while the development of the disease is more commonly associated with risk factors such as obesity, high blood pressure, and physical inactivity, research has shown that stress can also have a significant impact.

Now Dr. Sharon Toker of Tel Aviv University‘s Faculty of Management has found that low levels of social support and high levels of stress in the workplace can accurately predict the development of diabetes over the long term — even in employees who appear to be healthy otherwise. Published in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, the study contributes to an ongoing body of research linking work conditions to physical and mental health.

The researchers’ 3.5-year-long study of male and female employees established that work conditions had a preventative or predictive effect on the development of type 2 diabetes. Participants who reported having a high level of social support at work had a 22 percent lesser chance of developing diabetes over the course of the study. And those who described themselves as either over- or under-worked were 18 percent more likely to develop the disease. The results were controlled for various risk factors including age, family history, activity level, and body mass index.

Dr. Toker says these findings paint a grim picture, with a worrying rise in the rate of diabetes in the researchers’ middle-aged study cohort, which had a mean age of 48. “You don’t want to see working populations have an increasing rate of diabetes. It’s costly to both employees and employers, resulting in absenteeism and triggering expensive medical insurance,” she explains.

Assessing work conditions

For the study, conducted in collaboration with Prof. Arie Shirom of TAU, Dr. Galit Armon of the University of Haifa, and Dr. Samuel Melamed of the Tel Aviv Yaffo Academic College, researchers recruited 5,843 individuals who visited a health center in Tel Aviv for a routine physical examination sponsored by their employer. On these initial visits, all participants were healthy and had no indication of diabetes.

To assess whether physical and psychological strain caused by the work environment could predict the development of diabetes, Dr. Toker and her fellow researchers surveyed the participants according to an “expanded job strain model,” which takes into account measures of social support, perceived workload, and perceived control over work pace and objectives.

After the initial interview and examination, the health of all participants was followed for a period of 41 months, over which time 182 participants developed diabetes, reports Dr. Toker. When these results were analyzed in relation to reported work conditions, social support emerged as a strong protective factor against the development of the disease, with supported individuals significantly less at risk for diabetes than their unsupported peers. Workload was also correlated with disease development, with employees who felt either overworked or underworked being at increased risk.

Promoting the right balance

The results highlight some of the negative effects of our changing work environment, in which employees are putting in more hours than ever before, says Dr. Toker. Beyond the hours spend in the office, technology now allows us to be constantly connected, heightening expectations that work will be completed in non-working hours, ultimately increasing workloads. This takes a heavy toll on our health, she warns.

One of the most interesting findings of the study — that a too-small workload is as harmful as a too-large workload — shows that dramatically reducing the load of a busy employee may not have the desired effect. Employees will be stressed when overloaded, but they still need to feel challenged to be satisfied in their jobs, notes Dr. Toker.

She suggests that employers focus on finding the right balance in terms of workload and take the initiative to ensure their employees receive the necessary social support, whether that includes a network of emotional support, praising good work performance, or finding ways to improve office communication.

Source: Tel Aviv University

Older Entries